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Transport: from cream cans and campers to city centres and commuters

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Abstract

This chapter explores the history of transport provision on the Gold Coast. As a city that
experienced most of its growth in the golden age of the motor car, the Coast is synonymous
with the motoring way of life. But its transport planning history is more complex.
Transport accessibility and transport policy – or lack of it – have played a major role in
shaping the Gold Coast over time. Several of the most important centres and suburbs
established their dominance in a period when transport was mainly by water. Later, the
Coast’s collection of towns, resorts and early suburbs developed around a rail corridor that
was removed, then replaced decades later on an inferior alignment. In the period between
the two Gold Coast railways, the city was shaped by cars and roads so that today it is a
sprawling car-dependent city. Despite attempts to re-image the city with light rail investment,
the Gold Coast has been closely associated with cars, from Mayor Bruce Small’s
Meter Maids of the 1960s, through the motel strip of the Gold Coast Highway, to the Indy-
Car and A1 Grand Prix car races of recent decades.